Saturday, February 17, 2018

A couple of generations ago
in America,
people used to bowl together. A lot.

Not only would they bowl
together, but they were in leagues together. I can still remember seeing my
grandfather and uncle polishing up their bowling balls, putting on that team
jersey and heading out during the week. Bowling leagues were a thing back then.

In the years between 1980 and
1993, people stopped doing that. League membership dropped 40 percent in that
short period, although bowling itself remained popular.

What’s this got to do with
anything?

A man named Robert Putnam
decided to explore this phenomenon and wrote about the decline of social
belonging in America.
He also found that during that time period, people sat down to dinners as a
family 43% less often, attended club meetings 58% less often, and had friends
over to their home 35% less often.

He explored a number of
reasons for this decline in what he called "social capital." Busier lives,
changing workplaces, and longer commutes all played a role. Watching television
decreased social capital a great deal. And that was back when there were like
12 channels.

According to Putnam, one of
the side effects of the decline in social capital is less social involvement,
including lower voter turnout, fewer people volunteering and attending church
services and communities losing their sense of shared purpose and belonging.

Putnam published his book in
the year 2000, now a whole generation ago and prior to the stratospheric rise
in social media as a means of communication, Netflix as a ticket to almost
unlimited entertainment, and Tinder as a means to a quick hook-up.

His finding that our tendency
to lose ourselves in television seems even more intense these days. You used to
have to wait to see what would happen on your favorite show until the next
week. Now you can watch the whole season in a day.

And some might argue that
social media might help us stay connected, but does it really? I suspect a true
scan of an average person’s ‘friend” list on any of the major sites would
reveal they don’t get together with most of the people on that list.

And sure you can grab a date
on Tinder pretty quickly if you’re a semi-good looking person.

But I’ve had far too many
people in my office with broken hearts and much worse things than that as a
result of fleeting sexual relationships, to know that’s also not a great fix a
lot of the time.

The result is we are in many
ways still feeling disconnected. If you want to see how bizarre this really
looks, go out to any restaurant and watch a group of friends getting together.
My guess is half of them will be on their phones as opposed to being fully
present with the people they are ACTUALLY there to spend time with.

I don’t think a sense of
community is something that you lose overnight. The fact that families don’t
sit down together for dinner nearly as often seems to be one place that it
starts. And in the secondary circle beyond family, we aren’t keeping those
community relationships together either. One-third of Americans have now never
met their next-door neighbors. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2015/08/why-wont-you-be-my-neighbor/401762/

Every time there’s a school
shooting in America,
all the usual tired arguments get repeated over and over again. It’s so damn
exhausting. I have my own beliefs about guns and mental health, but that’s not
a place I want to go today.

I can’t help but think some
of our problems are related to the lack of community and connection. A sense of
belonging is a powerful need in humans, and when we don’t find that in the traditional sense, we
sometimes look for this belonging in dangerous places such as gangs, online hate
groups, and in the company of other angry people.

Societies don’t lose their
way all at once, but one can’t help but wonder where it is we are evolving when
we don’t prioritize our time to make families and communities a little
stronger. This is the glue that keeps the village running smoothly.

Saturday, February 3, 2018

As a psychologist, I don’t always enjoy reading the work of
other psychologists. The standard formula is often taking an idea, outlining it
in the first chapter, and then just kind of repeating that idea for the next
400 pages or so. Plus there’s too much jargon. I know the jargon and don’t even
use the jargon. Our clients rarely care too much about that stuff.

There have however been some wonderful books written about
psychology by journalists that have shed some light on why we do what we do.
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell was one of these books. In this book, he
explored a theory of crime and urban decay called “fixing broken windows.’ A
summary:

“If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking
by will conclude that no one cares. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the
sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street, sending a signal
that anything goes.”

In other words, when you let the little things go, the
bigger things can soon pile up as a result. The creators of the theory
demonstrated the idea in a number of cities and found it almost always held up.

Beyond economics and crime, I think there is perhaps also an
application for those of us managing the problems in our day to day lives.

When we ignore the little things long enough, they often
become big things.

There are many examples of these broken windows in our
lives. Maybe we’re feeling disrespected or unappreciated at work and have begun
calling in sick more often and slacking off. Perhaps it’s been a few weeks
since we’ve been intimate with our partners when we once had a healthy and
active sexual life together. Maybe we notice our once happy-go-lucky child is
all of a sudden distant and avoidant.

It’s easy to ignore broken windows at first. Maybe we simply
tell ourselves things will go back to normal soon enough. Or that it’s just a
blip. Or perhaps not worth the trouble of talking about.

But as I’ve learned the hard way in my own life, broken
windows become very messy houses if we leave them long enough. Unreturned phone
calls become estranged relationships. An irritating work situation becomes full
on insubordination. Failing to discuss relationship disagreements becomes going
to bed a little later and almost a complete lack of affection.

Broken windows...

We can address these broken windows by learning to embrace
assertive communication. As we see from the graphic above, all of the other
three primary modes of communication end with someone losing. When we are
passive, we sacrifice our own needs. When we are aggressive, we neglect someone
else’s needs. And perhaps the most irritating of them all is passive-aggressive
communication, where we are clearly bothered by something and punish both
ourselves and others rather than actually talking about it.

Assertive behavior is not always easy. When our emotions get
involved, it’s really easy to either heat up or shut down. Assertive behavior
requires us to manage these emotional surges and ask, “what problem are we
actually trying to solve here?” Even the best of us (I’m not one) get it wrong.
Get it wrong a lot.

Broken windows also occur all the time with our physical
health. Maybe we’re not sleeping nearly as well as we used to, but chalk it up
to a bad run rather than exploring the root of the problem. Perhaps we’re experiencing pain somewhere in our bodies but ignore it rather than go to the doctor
and potentially hear some bad news (men are notorious for this.)

Both physical and emotional pain usually starts with a broken
window. A warning sign. A little red flag letting us know that something is not
quite right.

This is, in fact, one of the primary purposes of pain. To
open a window and let us know that something needs checking out.

In 2018, I have resolved to start fixing a number of my own
broken windows. I emailed someone I was at odds with, made an appointment with
a doctor, and took my car into the shop. In all three cases, I actually felt tremendous relief when I got up and fixed those windows.

Give some thought to the broken windows in your life. I bet you can find a few that need a little attention.

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About Me

Dr. Joe Guse is a former comedian from the Pacific Northwest, who performed around Chicago for several years before deciding to go into psychology as a career. Joe made this seemingly odd transition after working as an entertainer in nursing homes, where he found that there was a very strong relationship between laughter, resilience and healing. This relationship between laughter and mental health has been the crux of Joe's work as a psychologist, and he has since written 19 books on various topics detailing his experiences integrating laughter into his work. Joe splits his time between Los Angeles and Auckland, and also does seminars around the world helping people explore the relationship between humor and mental health in their own lives. Joe holds 2 Master's degrees in Human Development and Counseling Psychology, and a doctorate in Clinical psychology. He is a Clinical
Psychologist registered in Illinois, Washington, New Zealand and Australia.

For interview requests

I am happy to do interviews and consult with other bloggers, journalists, and filmmakers in any way that is needed. Please contact me at joeyguse@gmail.com and I will get back to you as quickly as possible. I can also be reached at (312) 854-9863